In this eloquent guide to the meanings of the postmodern era, Albert Borgmann charts the options before us as we seek alternatives to the joyless and artificial culture of consumption. Borgmann connects the fundamental ideas driving his understanding of society's ills to every sphere of contemporary social life, and goes beyond the language of postmodern discourse to offer a powerfully articulated vision of what this new era, at its best, has in store. "[This] thoughtful book is the first remotely realistic map out of the post modern labyrinth."—Joseph Coates, The Chicago Tribune "Rather astoundingly large-minded vision of the nature of humanity, civilization and science."—Kirkus Reviews
Blending social analysis and philosophy, Albert Borgmann maintains that technology creates a controlling pattern in our lives. This pattern, discernible even in such an inconspicuous action as switching on a stereo, has global effects: it sharply divides life into labor and leisure, it sustains the industrial democracies, and it fosters the view that the earth itself is a technological device. He argues that technology has served us as well in conquering hunger and disease, but that when we turn to it for richer experiences, it leads instead to a life dominated by effortless and thoughtless consumption. Borgmann does not reject technology but calls for public conversation about the nature of the good life. He counsels us to make room in a technological age for matters of ultimate concern—things and practices that engage us in their own right.
In this volume, fifteen scholars from the United States, Spain, Puerto Rico, and Colombia discuss the social implications of new technologies. Their essays address the cultural worlds that crystallize around technologies, the challenges to democracy that they pose, and the responsibility of modern technology for forcing a public response to new social and moral issues. Three themes define the three sections into which the volume is divided: "New Worlds," "New Technologies," and "New Issues." The essays in the section "New Worlds" range from optimism that new technologies will produce a better world than that of 1992, through a nonjudgmental discussion of the transformation of our "lifeworld" that new technologies are effecting, to deep concern for the viability of the world that modern technology has already created. In "New Technologies," the focus is on political responses to modern technologies. The authors in this section see the challenge to understanding and controlling our technological world in reshaping existing relations of social power and authority, and in creating new institutions more adequate to the sociopolitical realities of the process of technological innovation. While the contributors in the first two sections of the volume argue that broad changes in values and institutions are preconditions of a more beneficent relationship among people, nature, and technology, those in the section "New Issues" adopt narrower, more specific, viewpoints. Their essays address the political values underlying the Deep Ecology movement, the ethics of military technologies, the capacity of democratic institutions for a public role in setting technology policies, and science and technology literacy mechanisms. Collectively, these essays reflect the growing international concern with the role played by technological innovation in a rapidly changing world, and they point toward the formulation of concrete political platforms for informed social responses to the innovation process.
Laurel Richardson and Ernest Lockridge-accomplished sociologist and published novelist-explore the fascinating interplay between literary and ethnographic writing. The exciting result is an intriguing experimental text that simultaneously delves into, reveals, simplifies, and complicates methodologies of writing and conveying experience. This boundary-crossing text will provide an ideal platform for students and professors interested in understanding and exploring the absorbing complexities and possibilities of ethnographic writing and creative nonfiction.
Can we use technology in the pursuit of a good life, or are we doomed to having our lives organized and our priorities set by the demands of machines and systems? How can philosophy help us to make technology a servant rather than a master? Technology and the Good Life? uses a careful collective analysis of Albert Borgmann's controversial and influential ideas as a jumping-off point from which to address questions such as these about the role and significance of technology in our lives. Contributors both sympathetic and critical examine Borgmann's work, especially his "device paradigm"; apply his theories to new areas such as film, agriculture, design, and ecological restoration; and consider the place of his thought within philosophy and technology studies more generally. Because this collection carefully investigates the issues at the heart of how we can take charge of life with technology, it will be a landmark work not just for philosophers of technology but for students and scholars in the many disciplines concerned with science and technology studies.
A call to redeem and restrain technology through everyday Christian practices and sacraments such as communal celebrations, shared meals, and daily Scripture reading.
America is a wonderful and magnificent country that affords its citizens the broadest freedoms and the greatest prosperity in the world. But it also has its share of warts. It is embroiled in a war that many of its citizens consider unjust and even illegal. It continues to ravage the natural environment and ignore poverty both at home and abroad...
Holding On to Reality is a brilliant history of information, from its inception in the natural world to its role in the transformation of culture to the current Internet mania and is attendant assets and liabilities. Drawing on the history of ideas, the details of information technology, and the boundaries of the human condition, Borgmann illuminates the relationship between things and signs, between reality and information. "[Borgmann] has offered a stunningly clear definition of information in Holding On to Reality. . . . He leaves room for little argument, unless one wants to pose the now vogue objection: I guess it depends on what you mean by nothing."—Paul Bennett, Wired "A superb anecdotal analysis of information for a hype-addled age."—New Scientist "This insightful and poetic reflection on the changing nature of information is a wonderful antidote to much of the current hype about the 'information revolution.' Borgmann reminds us that whatever the reality of our time, we need 'a balance of signs and things' in our lives."—Margaret Wertheim, LA Weekly
The discussions about the ethical, political and human implications of the postmodernist condition have been raging for longer than most of us care to remember. They have been especially fierce within feminism. After a brief flirtation with postmodern thinking in the 1980s, mainstream feminist circles seem to have turned their back on the staple notions of poststructuralist philosophy. Metamorphoses takes stock of the situation and attempts to reset priorities within the poststructuralist feminist agenda. Cross-referring in a creative way to Deleuze's and Irigaray's respective philosophies of difference, the book addresses key notions such as embodiment, immanence, sexual difference, nomadism and the materiality of the subject. Metamorphoses also focuses on the implications of these theories for cultural criticism and a redefinition of politics. It provides a vivid overview of contemporary culture, with special emphasis on technology, the monstrous imaginary and the recurrent obsession with 'the flesh' in the age of techno-bodies. This highly original contribution to current debates is written for those who find changes and transformations challenging and necessary. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of philosophy, feminist theory, gender studies, sociology, social theory and cultural studies.
